Arts & Ideas

Adam Smyth loves books - as well as being a Professor of English Literature he runs an experimental printing press from a cold barn in Oxfordshire. Who better then to tell us about the quirky pioneers of print, the subject of his new publication The Book-Makers? In this programme he takes us to 1490s London to tell the story of Wynken de Worde, a Dutch immigrant who came to work at William Caxton'...

Travelling in Woody Guthrie's footsteps inspired a history of hitchhiking written by Jonathan Purkis. He joins Matthew Sweet for a conversation which ranges across hitchhiking in the UK and in Eastern Europe, where Poland operated a kind of voucher system. We look at the influence of film depictions from the Nevada desert depicted in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and the hippie vibe of Easy Rider...

Recycling Victorian clothes, the history of costume design, the messages conveyed in art made from textiles and the stories encoded in ancient embroidery are explored by Shahidha Bari and her guests Isabella Rosner, Rianna Norbert-David, Jade Halbert and Danielle Dove. They also look at exhibitions at the Barbican Gallery in London and the Museum of London in Docklands. Isabella Rosner is the cura...

Formed in 1968, the German group Can's founding members included Irmin Schmidt and Holger Czukay who had both studied under Karlheinz Stockhausen. Joined by jazz drummer Jaki Liebezeit, guitarist Michael Karoli and Japanese vocalist Damo Suzuki for the group's 'classic' line-up that recorded Tago Mago (1971) and Ege Bamyasi (1972), their fourth album - Future Days - saw them exploring a more ambie...

Asked to picture a nineteenth-century ship, you might think of the HMS Victory or HMS Temeraire, symbolic of empire. Something epitomised by flag-waving and victory - Britannia rules the waves. In this edition of Free Thinking, Catherine Fletcher asks if we memorialise one aspect of our maritime past at the expense of others. Remember in Great Expectations when Magwitch escapes from a prison ship...

The first condoms were made of cloth and intended to be used after sex. Later they were replaced by hand stitched animal gut ones – designed to be washed and reused. We chart the bizzare, fraught and sexist history of attempts to deal with the prevention of sexually transmitted disease - where medical practice came into conflict with the morals of society. Histories of Sexual Health in Britain 191...

Chocolate is an indulgent luxury used to mark special points in the calendar like Valentine's Day, Easter and Christmas. But it's also everywhere, from breakfast cereals to protein shakes. Shahidha Bari unravels this paradox, tracing the meanings of chocolate from ancient Central America, via the Aztecs and Maya, over the Atlantic to the Spanish court, the coffee houses and palaces of 17th century...

An indulgent luxury used to mark special points in the calendar like Valentine's Day, Easter and Christmas, but it's also everywhere, from breakfast cereals to protein shakes. Shahidha Bari unravels this paradox, tracing the meanings of chocolate from ancient Central America, via the Aztecs and Maya, over the Atlantic to the Spanish court, the coffee houses and palaces of 17th century London, to t...

In February 1894, the French anarchist Martial Bourdin was killed in Greenwich Park when the bomb he was carrying exploded accidentally. The event provided Joseph Conrad with the inspiration for his novel The Secret Agent, and the resulting backlash against anarchist groups in London eventually led to the first British immigration legislation - the 1905 Aliens Act. As a conference takes place expl...

In 1989 the demilitarized zone between East and West was the venue for a gathering which was titled the Pan-European picnic. Matthew Longo's new book explores the Hungarian, East German and Russian politics which led to this happening and how it contributed to the ending of the cold war. He joins historians of art and food in a conversation hosted by Anne McElvoy which ranges across picnics in anc...

Bidisha, Peter Conradi and Lucy Bolton join Matthew Sweet to read the moral philosophy book published by Iris Murdoch in 1970. Murdoch, who died aged 79, 25 years ago on Feb 8th 1999, was a writer of novels and philosophy books which explored the nature of good/evil, the role of the unconscious and of sex and love. In 1978 she won the Booker prize for her story The Sea, The Sea and in 1987 she was...

The "best sci-fi film" never made? That's what Andrzej Zulawski's project has been called. Shut down by the Polish government before production had finished in 1977, the film wasn't completed and released until 1987. It's a visually stunning and wildly ambitious exploration of myth, religion and being human in an alien world. Zulawski (1940-2016) studied cinema in France and became known for art-h...

The Light of Asia: A History of Western Fascination with the East is the new book from New Generation Thinker and historian Christopher Harding. In Passions of the Soul, the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams looks at the classics of Eastern Christian writing. At Compton Verney in Warwickshire, the artist Gayle Chong Kwan is preparing to unveil ‘shrines’ made up of newly cast bronze of...

The stories told and secrets kept in Ireland north and south are the focus of a pair of deeply personal new non fiction books - Missing Persons Or My Grandmother's Secrets from University of Cambridge Professor of English Literature Clair Wills and Dirty Linen by Martin Doyle who is Books Editor of the Irish Times. They're joined by the criminologist Dr Louise Brangan who researches the sociology...

Historians continue to unearth documents, interpret new records accounts and reinterpret old ones in their light. In doing so they expand our understanding of unfolding antisemitism and the holocaust. Anne McElvoy speaks to Barbara Warnock the senior curator of the Wiener Holocaust Library, the world's oldest holocaust research institution as it marks its 90th anniversary this year. Rachel Pistol...

In the first decades of the 20th century the Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida sent students to Europe and America to see what they could discover about Western philosophy. Keiji Nishitani went to Freiburg to study under Martin Heidegger, and became one of the leading figures in the Kyoto School, a project of synthesis that tried to read the Japanese intellectual tradition through the lens of Eu...

Martin Heidegger is widely viewed as one of the most significant philosophers of the 20th century. His 1927 book Being & Time took issue with the entire Western intellectual tradition since Aristotle and suggested a new beginning for philosophy, which has been widely influential in philosophy and beyond. But Heidegger was a card-carrying member of the Nazi party, and there is considerable evid...

Neurodiversity, madness and disability are at the centre of the work being undertaken by three academics who join Matthew Sweet to look at the history of ideas about "normality". Dr Robert Chapman is Assistant Professor of Critical Neurodiversity Studies at Durham University and author of Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism. Dr Louise Creechan is also at Durham University and is wor...

From Lady Macbeth to Portia, Viola and Rosalind - Shakespeare's female characters continue to hold the highest appeal for actors, but less is known about the women in his own life. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust is embarking on a year of events and exhibitions looking a the women who made Shakespeare, many of them forgotten, exploring their influence in his lifetime and the women who shaped his...

What is the composition dirt and dust? Is there a better place to hang the washing? And how can I make my home more comfortable? These are all questions which preoccupy our guests. Jay Owens first became interested in the nature of dust around fifteen years ago. Her book entitled ‘Dust’ considers its global significance as a factor in both the dirt in our homes and major economic and political eve...

"A hermit in the middle of Los Angeles" is one way she described herself - born in 1947, Butler became a writer who wanted to "tell stories filled with facts. Make people touch and taste and know." Since her death in 2006, her writing has been widely taken up and praised for its foresight in suggesting developments such as big pharma and for its critique of American history. Shahidha Bari is joine...

Montaigne's literary self portraits led to him popularising the Essay form in the mid 1500s. With online articles, long reads in newspapers and magazines and a number of publishing houses interested in promoting essays and reprinting authors, Rana Mitter and guests look at what makes a good Essay drawing on examples from the past and present. Rana's guests are the author Kirsty Gunn; the essayist...

Henry VIII's encounter with Brazilian royalty, Inuit hunting in the Somerset countryside, Aztecs at the court of Charles V: Caroline Dodds Pennock's research flips history to focus on the impact of indigenous Americans on early modern Europe. And how is this kind of approach influencing museum displays? Anthropologist Adam Kuper has written a history of The Museum of Other People, charting the cha...

Going on a trip ? get ready to get uncomfortable, pack grease to treat your sore bum, and laudanum for the inevitable travel sickness - and perhaps you might also be in need of an anti-strangulation collar to ward off those potential murderers? We’re delving into the perils of travelling in the past. Back in the 1700s there was no such thing as a relaxing weekend break, travelling could be a fraug...

Mickey Mouse in his first incarnation in a short film from 1928 becomes available for public viewing without infringing Disney's copyright next year. In a programme looking back at the copyright history which affected authors including Charles Dickens and at current questions around legislation, Matthew Sweet is joined by David Bellos, author of Who Owns This Sentence? – A History of Copyrights an...